Category Archives: Green

How much time do you spend each day thinking about where water comes from and where it goes? Probably not very much and I have to admit I often take it for granted too. Since I watched the Tapped documentary though I have had a bug in my brain about the drought of 2007. I grew up in Dekalb county, but had moved to Raleigh by 2007. A few years ago local communities were running dangerously low on water and still people were dragging their feet when it came to conservation. Back in Atlanta folks were hit pretty hard by the drought as well. Read More

As a part of this year’s ASUC voting at UC Berkeley students are asked to lend their support for Bill 94 to help UC Berkeley reach its waste reduction goals. The vote, which lasts from April 5th-7th, will determine the fate of bottled water sales on campus. Thanks to @MyWaterOurWater for sharing the Daily Clog post about the vote.

I wanted to find out more about the ASUC voting so I looked up the 2011 UC Berkeley voters guide to see what Bill 94 was all about and have included it below in it’s entirety.

Bill 94 The End the Sale of Bottled Water Initiative

“UC Berkeley currently has a goal to reach 75% waste diversion by 2012 and zero-waste by 2020. Read More

Are you smarter than an 8th grader? I found this story on the Santa Cruz Sentinel site about a school that is ditching plastic water bottles in favor of reusable canteens. At Scotts Valley Middle School in California the students have picked up on a bright idea for the future, stop drinking from plastic water bottles. It can all be summed up in the message eighth-grader Hanna shared at a presentation for other students, “Water bottle trash is out of control. About 90 percent of the garbage in the ocean is plastic. Most of the garbage on the beach is plastic.” If you already knew that than you are at least as smart as Hanna when it comes to plastic pollution. Read More

April Fools Day is wrapping up and I hope you were all able to enjoy a good joke or prank today, hopefully not at your own expense either. Even on a fun day like April 1st it is important to think about some serious topics too. I found a great bulletin from Groundwater.org that lists their top ten ways to protect groundwater. I have copied the list into the post for you to check it out.

I think the thing that surprises me the most is how simple it can be to make a difference. Things like taking shorter showers and only running the washing machine or dishwasher when they have a full load are easy and actually will save you money too. Read More

A bit of news from a Businessweek article I read today (special thanks to @MyWaterOurWater for sharing it, follow him on twitter!), the state of Vermont is putting a stop to the purchase of bottled water in state buildings. State employees will have access to clean tap water, which the state government feels is a better use of their budget. Every year the state invests in public water so why spend extra on bottled water?

Even more important is the acknowledgment by Deb Markowitz of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources that bottled water has a negative environmental impact on the state ecology. Read More

A lot has been happening this week as we celebrate World Water Day 2011. Over at TakePart.com they featured this exclusive video and interview with Chris Perry, the director of Wall-E about his new animated short “The Incident at Tower 37”. The entire video is only about 10 minutes long and presents the story of a community threatened by the loss of their water supply. In the short film a large corporation is taking the water and leaving the community without enough water to support their own livelihood.

Perry is trying to raise awareness of a very real issue that faces many small communities, both human and those found in nature. Read More

We use plastic for a variety of functions because it is cheap and easy to use. The problem is how much of that plastic that we use every day is not handled responsibly and recycled. We have reached the point where pollution from plastics waste is having a severe effect on the environment. I am not talking about landfills, though there is definitely an argument to be made for the work we have to do there. What I wanted to talk about today is the accumulation of plastic in the ocean. Researchers, like Captain Charles Moore and his team, have discovered that plastic are polluting our oceans in a big way. Read More

A new study has found that many common pesticides block male hormones and may be a contributor to the decline in male reproductive health. This is one of the only recent studies to focus on human exposure to new chemicals. The majority of studies to this point have been about pesticides that are no longer used. The study found that 30 of the 37 pesticides tested were anti-androgenic and may play a significant role in blocking normal hormone activity.

Pesticides are widely used to protect crops from insects, diseases and weeds. The purpose of pesticide use it to keep people safe by preventing crops from being contaminated. Read More

How much do you know about our planet’s water supply? It might be a lot or very little, but how much you know is not as important as how much you care. Our water supply is a precious resource because it is what sustains life for all the living beings, human or otherwise, here on Earth.

So let’s start with the easy stuff. How much of the earth’s surface is covered by water? About 80%. You knew that one, right? See how many of the next group you can guess correctly. The answers are at the bottom of the post.

No, not the actual conversation, but the water you drink from the cooler. What many socially minded employees may not know is that the plastic water jug on top of the cooler increases their exposure to a chemical known as Bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is a synthetic estrogen compound used as a hardening agent to manufacture polycarbonate plastics, the more durable plastic used to make 5 gallon water jugs. BPA has been in use in plastics for decades and was long thought to be safe for human consumption because it is metabolized quickly. More recently independent toxicology studies have shown that not only is Bisphenol A a potential health risk to humans, but that it can leach into water and food stored in plastic containers. Read More